Sasha insisted: The river’s not the way, ’Veshka! You can’t leave us. You couldn’t leave your daughter or Pyetr if you died, and you know that—you know what you’d become!
Do you hear me, ’Veshka?
She had heard. She knew. They feared her: Sasha did, Ilyana did—even Pyetr would not trust her help or her opinions.
She completed the turn and the wind sank. Having done its best to capsize her, the storm settled down to a cold, drenching rain.
Sasha shoved logs into the bathhouse furnace, slogged back out in the rain to the woodpile and carried his next armload of wood up to the porch and into the house, never minding the mud on Eveshka’s floors. Pyetr and Ilyana were coming in with the boy, all of them half-frozen and covered with mud: he had water for washing, he had a stack of towels, clean clothes, dry boots, blankets, water was boiling in the house and in the bathhouse—
He had hidden all the books in the cellar with the domovoi, the safest and driest place he could think of under the circumstances, and he hoped to the god to be mistaken about what Pyetr and the mouse were bringing home.
Thorns. Thorns and golden leaves and blood—
Owl dying—
No magery. Memory. His mind conjured him that nightmare of Chernevog, the warning dreams—the dreadful stone—
Pyetr lying in the brush, in the dark, white shirt—dark branches—
He shuddered at that one. It had come true. Everything had come true, fifteen years ago. It was over with and he did not want to see those things again, or remember their so-thought bannik—
Not tonight.
Himself on a white horse, something clinging to his back—
But that had only been Missy. Missy had saved his life and saved all of them, thank the god. That dream had come true, and nothing but good had issued from it—
Patches had come of it. The mouse had. All these things. Chernevog was buried however restless his ghost. No bannik had ever come to the bathhouse to replace that strayed fragment of Chernevog’s soul. And if all of it should have strayed back tonight—
—in whatever form—
But by the sounds of horses coming along the hedge outside, there was an answer forthcoming, very quickly now.
He changed to a dry coat at the door (one of Pyetr’s old coats, as happened, a little long in the sleeves for him) figuring he was about to do a great deal more trekking about in the rain before he saw any rest tonight. He took down Ilyana’s coat from the pegs, picked up a bundle of blankets and opened the door just as the front gate banged, and he spied Pyetr afoot, holding the yard gate open for three very tired, very sore horses.
“The stable gate’s open,” Sasha shouted, on his way down. “Just let them go.”
Ilyana was riding Missy, and they had the boy slung over Volkhi’s back, with Volkhi walking free. Patches broke into a jog for the stable, and Pyetr called out, “Stop Volkhi, for the god’s sake, before he dumps the boy on his head.”
Sasha wanted Volkhi to head sedately for the bathhouse while he was about it, and met them in the yard. “Warm water inside, mouse, once you’ve rubbed the horses down. Pyetr, here, two blankets. I’ve got Ilyana’s coat. The bath house is fired up and ready for the boy.”
“Good,” Pyetr said, and trudged after Volkhi, wrapping one blanket about his shoulders as he went. He called back: “Ilyana, warm water for their legs, and a rubbing down. I’ll help you as soon as I can. Don’t over-water or over-feed, mind, a quarter measure of the grain, no more than that.”
A very tired, very sore mouse slid down as Missy walked for the stableyard gate. Sasha caught her arms and steadied her, and flung her coat around her as Babi ran off after Missy “Sorry,” he said, then, on his own way to the bathhouse “Help you when we can, there’s a good girl.”
“I’m all right,” she panted, and overtook him, struggling in the mud, trying the while to put the coat on. “Is the house all gone, uncle?”
She desperately wanted him to be all right and not to sad about his things. The truth was, and he let her know weak-kneed though he was from the scare and with his hand burned and his chest hurting from the smoke, his books were safe and the rest of it was actually a relief: there were no stacks of clutter in his house anymore. “Spring cleaning” he said, and coughed. “Finally got around to it.”
The mouse grinned, the flash of a sidelong glance in tin light from the shutters. He tousled her wet hair as their ways parted at the stable gate. “Brave mouse. Watch yourself. Magic’s certainly loose tonight.”
At the bathhouse, Pyetr had pulled the unconscious boy off Volkhi and hauled him in a trailing tangle of blankets for the door. “Go on,” Sasha told Volkhi, slapping him on It side. “Good fellow, Volkhi. Warm rags and a rub in the stable.” He followed Pyetr into warmth and light, in time to pull the door to behind them.
“She seems all right,” he said to Pyetr, as he took the boy’s feet and helped lay him on his back on the bench.
“Thank the god for that.” Pyetr unfastened the boy’s sodden coat. “Patches brought her right to this boy. I wish we had another place to put him.”
Gold thread. Silk. Sasha whistled softly, helping Pyetr rid the boy of his sleeves. “No farmer and no fisher, whoever he was.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“Not quite sure. He’s certainly breathing.” He picked up a chill white hand, and laid it on the boy’s middle, put his hand on the side of the boy’s neck and felt the beat. “Cold as last winter, though. There’s hot water and towels over by the fire. He’s already soaked to the skin. I’d say just pile them on him and let him and the towels and all dry in the heat. The fire’s good till morning.”
“Good enough.” Pyetr went and soaked the towels while Sasha pulled the boy’s boots off. He came back with an armful and began spreading them over the boy.
The boy opened his eyes, lifted his head and promptly fell back with a thump on the bench. Pyetr slipped a hand under his neck and shoved a hot towel under his hair. Dark hair, it was. Pale blue eyes that wandered this way and that in confusion. “This is a bathhouse.”
“Our bathhouse,” Pyetr said, setting his foot on the end of the bench and resting his arms against his knee. “As happens. He’s Sasha, I’m Pyetr, and you’re Yvgenie Pavlovitch, the last I heard, who swam all the way up from Kiev to drown in our woods.”
“I rode a horse,” the boy said, faintly, “from Kiev. I—”
There was a complete muddle in the boy’s thoughts: running afoot through the woods, the rain coming down—
Someone or something chasing him, something to do with his father.
A fabulous palace, gold and gilt everywhere, a gray-haired, frowning man, not happy with him, no: his father would beat him, and kill the men who had lost him if they did not him back.
Sasha put a hand on the boy’s forehead, wished him calm and the wish fluttered this way and that of an anxious heart. He looked through the boy’s eyes and saw two sooted, wild-haired strangers hovering over him, who might intend to rob him or worse. His thoughts leapt around like a landed fish: death, and a demand for ransom, which his father might well pay—if only to have him in his hands.
Impossible to say whether he was what he seemed. A shapeshifter believed what it was and would not seem otherwise until one managed to find its single essential flaw.
He said, gently, “Yvgenie Pavlovitch, you’re in safe hands if you’re what you look to be. But this forest is full of tricks and tricksters. We don’t dare ourselves trust everything to be what it seems.”
Yvgenie said, “There was a girl—”
“My daughter,” Pyetr said. “She pulled you out of the water: What were you doing in the woods?”